Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
E1: Charlie Cotton - Diving into the world of carbon footprint measuring
58 Plays7 months ago
In this episode, we dive deep into the world of carbon footprint measuring with Charlie Cotton.
Charlie Cotton is a self-confessed carbon geek. As founder of the carbon consultancy ecollective, he has helped countless companies understand where their emissions come from and how to reduce them, making it easier for them to do what they do, but with a much smaller carbon footprint.
In this episode we cover the importance of accurately measuring carbon footprints for businesses, strategies for reduction, as well as the challenges and opportunities in the carbon measuring landscape, and much more.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Charlie Cotton and Carbon Consultancy
00:00:06
Speaker
In this episode, we dive deep into the world of carbon footprint measuring with Charlie Cotton. Charlie is a self-confessed carbon geek. As founder of the Carbon Consultancy e-collective, he has helped countless companies understand where their missions come from and how to reduce them.
Understanding and Measuring Carbon Footprints
00:00:23
Speaker
In this episode, we cover the importance of accurately measuring carbon footprints, strategies for reduction, as well as the challenges and opportunities in the carbon measuring landscape and much more.
00:00:36
Speaker
This is Ecosystems, the podcast driven by the question, what's happening in this new era of sustainability? I'm Toby Carpenter and I hope you enjoy the episode.
Charlie's Journey to Sustainability
00:00:49
Speaker
Just to begin, I just wanted you to tell me a bit about your your background and um why you got into the field of carbon consultancy. Well, my background is a bit mixed. I used to work first. to Leo used to work for events, so helping things out like bringing the Olympic Games to London. And then I kind of did a bit of a side move into the travel world.
00:01:10
Speaker
designing trips and and creating experiences for people and then it was there where I started to have a bit more of a passion for kind of sustainability and it's kind of a bit ignited through what I felt were people doing a bit of a rubbish job on it or perhaps being a bit misleading on on some of the things they were claiming to be doing but I was perhaps a bit cynical about what they were actually doing on the ground.
00:01:33
Speaker
And it kind of all bred a little bit from there, this kind of passion for kind of designing things, being as good as I can at my job. So kind of creating experiences for people that they enjoyed, things that kind of made profit for the company, but how can it be how can i be the best in the industry at that job? And then bringing a new element to that of like, well, how can these be the most sustainable experience as possible? And it all kind of grew a little bit from there. So from there, I then decided to take the leap and get into the world of carbon and doing that full time. I originally, if I was honest, I wanted to kind of go of cover all of sustainability, but I quickly realized I was becoming very much a jack of all trades, master of
Why Specialize in Carbon?
00:02:17
Speaker
none.
00:02:17
Speaker
where actually each one of the kind of different parts of sustainability, like the UN Sustainable Development Goals are split up into 17 different areas. And I just didn't feel like I'd be ever be good enough to kind of stand up and stage or or tell a company what they should do from all 17 areas. And my skills very much naturally align more with the carbon world. because It's quite mathematical. It's quite kind of black and white, the carbon footprint.
00:02:44
Speaker
of this is x, or what's that? um And that leads more to my kind of number-based way of working things, rather than other areas with a bit more subjective. I'm not so strong on. And what does a collective do in a nutshell? What would you say?
eCollective's Approach to Carbon Measurement
00:03:01
Speaker
ah In a nutshell, a typical project for us is working with a company who's never measured their footprint before. So we take on the challenge of working out what it is, what is their total carbon footprint over a 12 month period. And in that, we will be including their offices, their working from home emissions, their business trips, that 90% of that work, it's going to be trying to work out the carbon footprint of what they sell. So if they sell holidays, what is the carbon footprint of all those trips? If they sell Jewelry is trying to work out with the carbon footprint of all the products that they sell in their store or maybe on their website and that is really the kind of fun part of the job. So the first half is getting the calculator out trying to work out what is the carbon footprint of everything and then the second half is the bit more of the entrepreneurial side that I get out of bed for which is
00:03:48
Speaker
how can we design whatever they sell or how they operate internally so it's still ah successful, it still does its job, it still makes the customer happy but it just comes with as much a smaller air footprint and we have to, well i'm I'm certainly a big believer that we have to do the first part of the measurements to be able to be informed enough to try and spot those opportunities to kind of create better products for the future.
00:04:13
Speaker
So it's the strategy side of things that gets you really excited, as opposed to the measuring? Yeah, that's
Innovation in Sustainable Products
00:04:20
Speaker
what I really think. I think we can, I think we make lots of really crap stuff, if I'm honest, like, I'm trying to think of the example I saw the other day, but I think it was like Magnum had just released a new ice cream, and it's now just a circle shape instead of a traditional ice cream shape. And there's a big billboard about this new products, new and improved,
00:04:38
Speaker
I'll just look at that, I get a little bit depressed, of like, are the greatest minds at Magnum? Just all they can do is come up with a different shape ice cream. I think there's so much more opportunity for kind of innovation and designing things. And that's what I get excited about. How can we have better stuff that just doesn't cost the world as a world, cost the earth. So do you tend to, do you work with design teams within the companies or with the clients that you work with then to try and formulate new ideas and approaches?
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of the time. So for a lot of the companies you work with, they're typically called product teams, but they're essentially design teams. And sometimes they have complete ownership of it to some extent. And sometimes it's a lot of it, it comes through their supply chain. So anyone then in the fashion world, they'll be saying, well, actually,
00:05:24
Speaker
most of our footprint comes from the material that we use on the t-shirt or the jacket that we make and so we need to kind of get in touch with our factories or suppliers of those things and to find out what what is the footprint of that particular cotton or that particular item we're
Challenges in Reducing Carbon Footprints in Industries
00:05:41
Speaker
using. So it's always a bit tricky because everything's got a carbon footprint so if we take a carbon footprint of a holiday as an example we've got the flights we've got airport transfers we've got the hotels we've got the meals you eat you might go jet skiing on day three you've got you might have a local
00:05:57
Speaker
tour leader who comes around and shows you around the city on day five everything has a carbon footprint so there's in theory it's quite exciting because there's no end for opportunities of how can we do things better even like the small thing the airport transfer can we get them from the airport to the hotel in an electric car or perhaps by public transport which is going to have an impact it'll probably immensely have quite a small impact in terms of producing the carbon footprint but That's the kind of challenge we give to design teams. I say that there's 50 different ways you can make this trip have a smaller footprint, but I need your expertise of understanding your customer, understanding your business, understanding perhaps your local supply chain in that country we're talking about.
00:06:44
Speaker
try and find those opportunities to sit to make the trip better. Perhaps the electric car is better because it's cheaper or quieter or perhaps actually it makes no impact at all. The customers don't even notice, so why not make that change anyway? Whereas other things are perhaps a bit harder. So if we were to say, let's say it's a trip to Barcelona from London, getting the train there might be a bit of a hard sell because it might make it more expensive and it might be a longer journey to get there in the first place but that's where we kind of give that challenge to the design team to say you make the call and perhaps don't be put off straight away have a bit of imagination to say well actually can we make the train journey part of the adventure as well can we get them
00:07:27
Speaker
loads of champagne to drink on the train, which you can do on the train, but it's not so easy as to do when you fly or whatever it may be. So in a space like travel, it's not it's not about redesigning a physical product, it's kind of redesigning an entire experience in which you deliver to a customer.
00:07:44
Speaker
yeah Yeah, absolutely that. Unless they own the hotel or they own the cruise liner itself, most travel companies, particularly in the UK, are working with other companies that supply chain. So it's just trying to find the best suppliers out there in the world to try and bring it all together and be a bit creative about what is a ah five-star holiday. It doesn't have to be what it's always been in the past. It can be a little bit more imaginative. So one thing I put out to some companies recently is about if we're looking at um one of my bugbears is if people go to South America from the UK, they typically say something I want to go to Brazil, and I want to see Brazil and kind of tick it off to some extent. Brazil is massive. And you're going to spend half your time on a flight because you might be going to Rio, you then might be going into the Amazon jungle, you might then to spend some time at a whole different beach area.
00:08:37
Speaker
And I get that kind of reason why they want to see the best bits of Brazil, but I think there's perhaps an opportunity there to kind of redesign trips better so that they spend less time in airports, in transfers, in airplanes, which is essentially the worst part of the trip, in my opinion. So we're talking about giving those design teams at some companies that are kind of target, to say,
00:09:02
Speaker
On average, your customer spends 15% of their holiday either in the plane, or in the airport waiting to get on the plane and that would be considered a bad experience. So how can we make sure that the trips you design next year, 10% of the holiday is only sat at airports or up in the air. And the hope would be that that would reduce emissions but also ah increase the enjoyment from that experience from the customer so you get a better review in the next
Complexities in Carbon Measurement Methodologies
00:09:33
Speaker
year.
00:09:33
Speaker
and And in terms of the the measuring side of things, so I've i've read that is you know there's lots of different methodologies and approaches to being able to measure carbon footprints. Is there a particular one that you use? And if so, why do you use that? Or or do you or does the methodology differ from company to company? Great question. That's a bit of ah a gray area. So the general kind of rules or the guidance you should follow is something called the GHG protocol.
00:10:02
Speaker
And I'd probably say 95% of all carbon accounts that companies are following that general guidance. But within that, there is a bit of up to your own discretion because you might be using different data to do these calculations. Some things you might think are not applicable to certain companies or you haven't got the time or whatever it may be. So whenever you see a carbon footprint of anything, if you go down to the the store and you buy some something that has the carbon footprint on it, it's never going to be 100% accurate because no one has got the time for that or the kind of level of granularity to make it perfect. If we were to say, let's say you bought a burger from McDonald's, are they going to go into the level of detail, detail finding out where exactly your lettuce leaf in your Big Mac came from?
00:10:48
Speaker
Was it shipped over? Was it flown over? Did it come in plastic packaging? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. kind of get like The aim is to find out the carbon footprint to about 90% accuracy and just get comfortable that it's never going to be 100%. So with that,
00:11:02
Speaker
We should all be following the same rules and guidance. So when you compare the carbon footprint of a Big Mac to a waffle from Burger King, they should be comparable and it should be a fair comparison because how they've measured both things that should be similar, but neither of them will be 100% perfect. And if they're doing it well.
00:11:22
Speaker
they should be reevaluating how that burger was calculated on either a yearly or kind of two yearly basis to say, how can we make this 90% accurate calculation up to 92% accurate the next year? So it's an evolving science. and And the classic in the industry is if you go on and say, what is the carbon footprint of my flight from London to New York into Google?
00:11:49
Speaker
ah Google will now actually give you an answer because they now do that as part of their service. But before that, you'd get 10 different answers from 10 different websites, which is really unhelpful, but it's a bit of the nature of the beast at the moment. Would those 10 different answers be totally different to each other? Or would there be maybe some some similarity between them usually?
00:12:10
Speaker
In that particular example, they'd be completely different because the airline industry is arguing about how you should calculate it. But the hope is year on year on year, as an industry, we're getting better and more and more aligned on these things. And hopefully we're talking with our essentially our competitors who also measure the carbon footprint of stuff to say, hey, this company spent a million pounds on advertising on on Facebook ads or something last year. How the hell did you measure that when you got given that challenge?
00:12:40
Speaker
And then hopefully we're getting more and more aligned of how we do that in terms of accuracy, but also that comparability side of things. Are there any elements that are included or excluded in carbon footprint measuring that you think people would consider surprising?
Surprising Sources of Carbon Emissions
00:12:56
Speaker
I think people would be surprised about how much is included. So if we were to do like a company, we'd also be measuring working from home emissions, for example. So if you decide to take Fridays from home, we'd be measuring the footprint of you having your laptop on at home, maybe a light. And if you're in a cold country like the UK, the heating throughout the winter months. um If you're and working from an office, we also work out how much water your office uses because
00:13:25
Speaker
water being supplied to your office has a carbon footprint and then it being discharged as well has another carbon footprint all these different things go into it so I think most people are often surprised how much goes into it. The big thing at the moment about what's missing is perhaps things that are a bit harder to calculate so for example my conversation before this today was about pensions like we don't currently as a company measure the carbon footprint of your prevention provider at work and should be doing that. If your company's got a million pounds in the bank sitting there doing nothing, we don't measure the impact that it might have if it's with Barclays or if it's the impact it might have if it's with another bank. So those are the ones that spring to mind but
00:14:11
Speaker
The carbon footprint world is pretty um in depth in general when it comes to these calculations and I sometimes worry actually its it goes too far. We're going to spend too much time with the calculators and because we've got this deadline of oh so many years left to start to dramatically produce emissions, I do worry that actually it might be more beneficial for us to be spending more time on action and changing stuff than it is about getting even geekier and geekier with these calculations at the stage already. I think from personal preference, and it's only really based on our own work at eCollective, but I think we go to more than enough details already to be able to to say
00:14:52
Speaker
This is an obvious no-brainer change we should make within the business. We could make it more accurate, but it might take an extra two months. um is Is this a bit of a trade-off between accuracy and time? i get I worry we don't have the luxury of time at the moment, which might mean a tough trade-off with the accuracy side of things.
Accuracy vs. Action in Carbon Measurement
00:15:12
Speaker
If there's like a huge trade-off between accuracy and time, are there any regulators checking the accuracy of of these calculations or does anyone notice if they're not done accurately and is there any, you know, what happens? but the Numbers do get checked. So our numbers get checked by auditors for large companies, perhaps not so much for smaller ones.
00:15:35
Speaker
um But best practice at the moment is to kind of put yourself out there. So whenever we do a piece of work, we would announce our figures, encourage the company we just measured to talk about it publicly, and then we would share our methodology publicly as well, saying this is what we've included, this is what we haven't, this is how we measured the carbon footprint of a jet ski experience on day three, for example.
00:15:57
Speaker
got I think there is probably an element at the moment that most people will have no idea when I tell them that the company's footprint is 63 tons of CO2, whether that's shocking, amazing, or anything between. So it's kind of like a little bit of just It's just complete blindness at this stage because people aren't kind of carbon literate to that degree yet. It might have been like that maybe 10 years ago with calories, for example, that where if you said you're going back to that Big Mac example, let's say it's got a calories of 2000. I wonder, I have no memory back then, but if people said that, would but they know if that's good, bad or terrible, but maybe today people might have an idea of actually that's quite a large number for one meal.
00:16:44
Speaker
I have no idea, but that there is a need for us to start normalizing these these figures a bit more because then it becomes easier to kind of spot mistakes. If the regulations or if there are not many regulators checking small to medium sized companies, has there yeah come ever come across conflicts of interest between you know businesses that might want to report their emissions being lower than in reality? Is that something you've ever come across?
00:17:10
Speaker
no Not hugely frequently, but it definitely happens. But actually that's the complete, you're shooting yourself in the foot. So what you actually want to happen is when you measure your footprint, you want it to be a really big number because the aim for every single company is to reduce their emissions. So if you're new to this, it can be very tempting for us here to perhaps mislead and say, oh, no, we didn't get any flights anywhere last year. And we don't, oh, don't worry about that. We don't really do it.
00:17:39
Speaker
We use electricity, but we don't really use any much at all. But what's going to happen is you're going to have a very low score, which is going to seem great for kind of maybe three months. But then you're going to say, I've got to reduce your footprint by 90%. And then obviously, as years come by, there will be more rules and regulations and less ways to be able to kind of cheat the system, which I mean, your footprint comes up. But also, you're going to really find it really hard to reduce your emissions further.
00:18:05
Speaker
so it It's happening less and less on that front because people can see, well, actually, if my challenge once these figures come out is to reduce it, I actually want the opposite. I want the number to be really high to make my life easier. So I haven't come across companies doing the opposite of perhaps inflating it. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if if that would be more of the case than the opposite going forward.
00:18:28
Speaker
What you are allowed to do is because no carbon footprint is 100% perfect. The sustainable world at the moment is quite lenient to say, look, we're all on to be quite cheesy this journey together.
00:18:41
Speaker
and If you get better at calculating in three years time because you have new data coming in or new guidance has come out to say you must now include this, um you're allowed to kind of update all your previous year calculations to be based on the new method. So it's all meant to be about driving change and learning as we go along, but you're not kind of held to work that you did three years ago and say that's fixed and and final ah because no carbon footprint at the moment is perfect. Okay. So, so over the years, things are becoming more accurate and there's more, is there more and more regulation that you've seen over the years kind of driving my higher degrees of accuracy, essentially, and, and also higher degrees of, I guess, honesty as well?
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. So it's a government, so kind of starting to make it safe. I think you've got, if you're a medium to large size business, I can't remember, but let's say it's 250 employees, you now have to report back some basic carbon figures on an annual basis. They are super basic if you're kind of in this world, but at least it's something and it's normally the first time these companies have ever been asked. So that's starting to kind of normalize it a bit and get people thinking about it.
00:19:57
Speaker
And there's also, it's quite a cool startup area in terms of the carbon accounting world. ah There must be a new startup popping up every single week for the last three years. And there are some super smart people out there. So some are definitely focusing on the the speed challenge. How can I measure your footprint in 10 minutes? Some are focusing on the are accuracy size that perhaps they are just focusing on maybe that example earlier, we're we're just going to focus on measuring pensions, for example, but we're going to be the best in the world at doing that. And that's kind of also kind of bringing on just a kind of a development of this industry, I suppose, because everyone's quite sure everyone says it's about everyone's industry, but it is quite nice and that everyone sees the issue is bigger than themselves. The people are quite willing to share and open up about how they do things and ah encourage a bit of scrutiny to say, could you do this better? And if so, how?
00:20:56
Speaker
And what's the most complex carbon footprint project that you've been involved in?
Measurement Challenges in Construction and Fashion
00:21:02
Speaker
There's two that stand out. I hate and any time construction comes up. We built this in the last year, how sort of shit, something massive, because it's really hard to know like, what what is the carbon footprint of this, that and the other, all these different things that went into that building.
00:21:19
Speaker
It also tends to be a bit of like certain industries aren't so good at their record keeping. So if I said, can you send me a list of all the things that all the materials you use to build that thing? ah My little experience with the construction world is a bit like there's just no records of anything anywhere that was ever used. So that makes that really tricky because it feels like you're kind of a bit blind. though What the hell am I meant to kind of calculate here if I've got no information?
00:21:48
Speaker
The other one that was super confusing to me, having not had that background as the fashion world, because their supply chains go so deep. So let's say we are measuring a t-shirt company. They say, yeah, we've got a factory who does this. And then we contact the factories. They're like, tell us everything. about like And they'll be like, no, no, no. We get all our stuff from this other factory. And then it goes on and on and on.
00:22:14
Speaker
and on and that just obviously makes it so hard to work out what is the actual truth here of what is going on. So those two in particular I've dabbled with but oh so lightly because I've just had my fingers burn and think I just need to be, if I was to do those things I and kind of have to do that all day every day to become a real master of how do you measure the carbon footprint of new buildings or for that fashion world of really getting to understand those supply chains because complicated base. When you're missing maybe like key parts of the data that you're looking for and searching for, is there any data you use to replace that? are there Are there any kind of industry averages that you look for or even I know there's this synthetic data. Do you use stuff like that to replace data you might need?
00:23:02
Speaker
all the time so when you measure the carbon footprint let's say for year one you want your final figure to include everything even if the company had no data on it at all but you know it happened so for us in the travel world it comes a lot with meals so they'd be like we know our customers um let's say booked and all inclusive we know there were meals included i've got no idea what they were eating though because it might have been a buffet or they just have no idea it was just meals included it could be a veggie meal, vegan meal, meat meal, salad, ice creams, whatever, they've got no idea. So we typically, in that case, we would assume the worst case scenario, which would be kind of known as a high meat meal, and we'll give it a score accordingly. So we would assume, unless they tell us otherwise, every customer who had a meal had a high meat meal, which has a carbon footprint of 2.6 kgs,
00:23:57
Speaker
And then that's how we do the calculation. So we put in a worst case assumption because I'd rather overestimate their footprint than underestimate it. And then at the end of the project, we'll give them that feedback that'd be like, it'd be really cool in the next 12 months if you could actually find out what the hell is going on on this particular thing, because our advice to you at the moment can't be that detailed because we don't even know what they're eating. So whilst it's a common sense move for them all to be eating a higher percentage of vegetables,
00:24:27
Speaker
So you can get on and with that action, it'd be really cool to see if what that percentage is starting as of today. Okay. And and these these percentages and the maths and the formulas that used to create the data, these formulas are part of the GHG reporting on the guidelines or these formulas that you constructed based on years in the industry, or is it a mix of both? How does it work?
GHG Protocol Methods and Accuracy
00:24:52
Speaker
but A bit of a mix of both. So if you were to go onto the GHG protocol,
00:24:57
Speaker
and you're measuring the carbon footprint of, let's say, staff commuting, maybe a section on that, it would say you can probably use these three different methods of how to measure staff commuting. This is method number one, if you've got all the data, method number two, if you've got some of it, method that number three, if you've got hardly anything. And they'll obviously say their first thing is to say, try and use method number one as much as possible and encourage your company to do so. But obviously, as to kind of help with getting things done, if you've got no data, method number three is an acceptable thing for now, I think just to kind of get things going. And they won't say the exact
00:25:42
Speaker
figures we should be using because that comes from elsewhere so for example the UK government then say if you want to measure staff commuting traveling one kilometer on the tube has a carbon footprint of this figure so you then work out how many kilometers the team have traveled by tube need to times it by that figure taken from the UK government.
00:26:05
Speaker
And in terms of clients and companies coming to you, why do the companies that you work with usually decide to measure their carbon impact?
Motivations for Carbon Footprint Reduction
00:26:13
Speaker
is it Is it usually due to business interests or is it like an emotional, environmental, empathetic reason to actually just wanting to do something about climate change and their carbon emissions, or is it a mix of both?
00:26:26
Speaker
There's a broad range, if I'm honest, I'd say the overriding one is just passion that they're proud of what they do. And they want to make sure that what they create does have a more positive impact on the world in the next year and and even more so the year after that. So that is absolutely the driving range, particularly in travel, I would say, where what you're selling if you open up a brochure is a beautiful beach or conservation area in the most ah beautiful places of the earth. And if you're selling those things and making money off it, I would i think most people in that world will absolutely feel that they should also be doing as much as they can to protect it in the long term as well. So that would be the overriding one. um The business case for doing so really depends on your industry. So for example, a hotel has a really clear business case for reducing their emissions because
00:27:23
Speaker
Reducing their emissions for a hotel basically means how do we spend less money each year on electricity, on oil, on gas, ah whilst keeping a happy customer. So if you can do those things, have smaller bills, but five-star reviews, why the hell wouldn't you do so? And then in other industries, it's a bit harder. So going back to that fashion one, it's a bit harder because and Most of your emissions come from your supply chain, so there's not such a clear business win from from that side of things and at the moment
00:27:56
Speaker
The data suggests there's much more of a say-do gap when it comes to customers. Customers will say they will buy green, but when they actually come to the checkout, it is not quite matching up yet on that front. It is a growing number, but it's quite small. So there's not a clear incentive yet from customers making it, but hopefully that will be changing in the coming years.
Effective Reduction Strategies
00:28:20
Speaker
And in terms of the strategy side of things, so I know you mentioned it's the stuff that really kind of gets you out of bed in the morning. um but what makes it What makes a good carbon reduction strategy?
00:28:31
Speaker
It's something we're actually kind of working out at the moment. we've We've tried a few different things when it comes to that. So once we know your your footprint, we'll work out where the hell is it coming from? Is it from your office? Is it from your website? Is it from your brochures? Is it from your staff commuting? Is it from what you sell? And if so, let's say we're talking about holidays. Is it from the flights? Is it from the cruises? Is it from the hotel on day four. And we'll try and be really, so the first thing we'll do is anything with less than 1% of a footprint, we'll ignore. So we never really talk too much about staff commuting. We never really talk about companies websites because even if you did a dramatic improvement in the website in terms of reducing its footprint, it's not gonna really hit in the end of year results because it's such a small part of the big picture.
00:29:24
Speaker
And the cliche example of that in the in the tourism industry is perhaps a hotel talking about how it no longer has plastic straws. Well done is a good thing not to be increasing the amount of plastic waste that goes on. But if you're patting yourself on the back for that and and like celebrating, I'm a bit worried you're missing the big picture.
00:29:46
Speaker
So we try and find the big things that even if we move them a little bit in the next year in the right direction, it's going to have a big impact on the total score. um So most people are shocked when actually a really successful year of carbon reduction is only reducing your emissions by maybe five or six or seven percent. So if you hit those kind of results on a yearly basis, you are world class, in my opinion, you are one of the best companies in the world.
00:30:12
Speaker
even though these percentages sound a bit small, particularly compared to their maybe internal sales targets, which might be we're going to double in size, all I'm pitching to them is can we reduce your footprint by 5% in the next year? And then let's say we're going with 5%, the aim is to try and do find as few strategies as possible that mean you're going to hit that 5% that also work for the business. Are we making the customer happier? Are we making more profit because of this new strategy? And are we significantly our footprint in the next year? So we typically try to find three actions that a company can do to reduce the emissions that are going to tick those boxes, and then we
00:30:58
Speaker
like at the moment, it's a new thing. I'm not sure, we haven't really got the results to see if it's working. We then like to add an an extra. rule which is one of those strategies has to be based on the employees rather than the products that you sell. So even though it might be a small thing, we really like to kind of get the teams practicing what they preach before they start talking to suppliers, before they start talking to customers about what they think they should be doing when it comes to buying better or perhaps how they
00:31:31
Speaker
run their own business just because I think it's kind of a good comms piece, but also I think it's a good good strategy because some of the companies we work with will have a head of sustainability and it tends to go fairly terribly if the company's attitude is that ah it's the head of sustainability's job to hit that carbon reduction score.
00:31:55
Speaker
It's far more successful when they are delegating out to say, look, finance, you've got to take ownership of your related emissions from the things we bought in the last year, have marked, and you're in charge of brochures on the website, product, designs. You need to work on the things that we sell. And that's the way around. So sorry, that was the longest answer ever to that question. But I hope that kind of makes sense.
00:32:20
Speaker
happy to give some particular examples if you'd like. Definitely definitely some examples would be great because one of my questions was actually around examples and and maybe some of the most innovative forward-thinking approaches you've seen by by companies to reduce their emissions or implementing some of the strategies that you've spoken about.
Innovative Strategies for Reducing Footprints
00:32:40
Speaker
Well the one that always gets the most debate going is around business travel.
00:32:44
Speaker
Everyone on the team has always got an opinion on business travel, whether they love it and see it as one of the biggest perks of the job, or they absolutely hate it, particularly if they have like kids and already have a busy life already and they just see it as time extra time away from home. So there are like a couple of examples already with but business travel that can happen. So the one we're really pushing at the moment is a bit complicated. It's called a business travel carbon budget.
00:33:12
Speaker
So we will work out how much carbon the team emitted from business travel in the last year. And then we'll say as a team, you've got to and miss emit less carbon in the next year. So it's up to you to say which trips you're going to do over the next year. Let's say your budget for the year was 500 kilos of CO2. Now, suddenly as a team, you can decide if you're going to go to Paris three times by flying,
00:33:39
Speaker
or 100 times by Eurostar and we put that pressure onto them to then say well actually we can do this. I can go to Paris 100 times or I can go to Paris by playing three times or I can go to New York once and it's up to them to decide how best they should be using their kind of business travel allowance in the next year. Managers tend to really like that one because it kind of just shifts the problem a bit onto the employees to say look there there are some tricky decisions to make. You decide which business trips are most important for you in the next year in terms of doing your job well and then can we decide?
00:34:19
Speaker
How do you get there in the the lowest carbon form necessary? But there's much easier out there is already out there which you don't have to start measuring your footprint to implement. The one I really liked the other day, which seems so obvious to me, is if you do lots of business travel and you typically fly in business class,
00:34:38
Speaker
um You could switch to economy which reduces your footprint by sometimes up to three times smaller um and the money that you save the company by travelling in economy gets split between your company gets 50% and you the employee gets a bonus of 50% so if it's an extra £1000 in your pocket for reducing your footprint naturally, traveling in economy is worse than business, but perhaps it's worth it for £1,000. So that was a simple strategy some companies started to do to reduce costs, make employees happier, to take that trade off, it was up to them to make that call, and it reduced their footprint. um And so that was the real kind of crux that how can we do things better?
00:35:19
Speaker
We often get asked about whether it's better to be commuting and going to an office or working from home, which is always quite an interesting one. We used to get that wall loads during COVID or just after it, and it hasn't come up so much recently. But there's some really interesting trade-offs about how how do we operate as teams as most carbon-efficiently as possible.
00:35:39
Speaker
And because it's all about that word efficiency, there's often really good strategies you can implement that reduce costs because it's more efficient and it makes people happier because we're saving them time.
Sustainability Focus in Events
00:35:51
Speaker
ah there Are there any great strategies you've seen used in the events industry? Because, you know, any event that you might go to, there might be lots of ah purchases they've made just purely for that one time, you know, one time event. um Are there any any the innovations that you've seen in that space?
00:36:07
Speaker
Loads going up. The hardest thing for the events world when it comes to carbon is what you see as a visitor is typically not where your footprint comes from. So the cliche example is you go to a sustainable event and the first thing you do is get given a plastic lanyard to put around your neck and people go, oh, that's not very sustainable. It's kind of a bit of a plastic waste. Why is it done like that?
00:36:32
Speaker
They're absolutely right. There's other ways to do it, at which he doesn't need to result in single use plastic. and But that's not the big picture when it comes to your carbon footprint of an event. We're looking at how did everyone get to the event? Were they flying? Were they driving and the emissions associated with that?
00:36:50
Speaker
You've got the carbon footprint of the venue itself. If you're in the Excel or Wembley or wherever it may be, what is the carbon footprint of that building that you're in? And then you've got all the kind of um structures that are perhaps going up in place, whether they're stages or exhibitions or whatever it may be.
00:37:06
Speaker
And they, because you'll be amazed at how many of those are single use, they filled them for one event and then it goes to the scrapyard for the next. But they tend to be the things that don't get picked up by, by visitors when you ask them, was that a sustainable event or not? Because it's a little bit behind the scenes. So when it comes to innovation there of what, what things are going on and what they're doing.
00:37:27
Speaker
The biggest challenge for them is on travel. And I'll probably say that's where most people feel the biggest fear of like, how the hell can we get people coming to events by public transport or perhaps local to the home? So we're starting to see more events happen closer to where the audience is. It sounds so obvious, but you'd be amazed at how people aren't doing it until it gets raised. Like if all your customers are coming from London, perhaps the venue should be near London.
00:37:57
Speaker
And then in terms of the stands and exhibitions and the build side of things, more events are putting rules into place to say, well, actually, ah not quite sure. Punish is not the right word, but you kind of get a little bit more rewarded if what you're building at the event is not single use. And it makes total sense. If you're doing kind of like a festival circuit, you want to kind of build a structure that gets used at every single part of that circuit because Why would you buy a new one each time? So I'm not sure how innovative they are and things like that. but
00:38:34
Speaker
There's lots going on in that space, which is really exciting when it comes to events, but it's hard to communicate with people because it's not the cliche things of what they see of plastic lanyards and free leaflets and recycled bins not being available. But there is there is some cool stuff going on behind the scenes. It's really
Tools for Departmental Carbon Reduction
00:38:51
Speaker
interesting. And in terms of, I read that you um you create these carbon footprint tools for clients to then use internally. Is that is that right?
00:39:00
Speaker
yeah Yeah, so we um what we want to do is give everyone a bit of ownership of their own particular department and get them geeky about the carbon footprint of X and Y and Z. So if they're innovating and being designers in their own department, so let's say even if they're in finance and they're about to buy a laptop, I want them to be able to quickly do some sums and say, look, what is the carbon footprint of buying a secondhand laptop instead of a brand new one?
00:39:26
Speaker
and for them to then make that decision without having to come to me. So we would build them a tool to say look if we're going to buy 60 laptops in the next year if I switch them all to be second hand I get a carbon saving of this and it's up to them to decide whether that's exciting for them and and worthwhile and perhaps they'll have a cost saving as well associated to that.
00:39:48
Speaker
and like going of leave that decision making up to them. And so we try and build these tools for them as much as possible so they can make the decision in place. Okay. and And these tools, would they all be bespoke tools for that individual business? Or can businesses use standardized tools and and it work well enough? For some things, so if we're talking about an office, there's probably some good standardized tools out there and the tools we we create for people are pretty similar company on company ah because it's the same kind of questions we're asking again and again and again. For whatever they sell, it might be a little bit harder because it might be quite unique to them if they're selling this piece of jewelry that happens to be from this supplier and this type of gold and the lab-grown diamond from this company. It quickly becomes too complicated to have something standardized. So it kind of depends on what is the subject matter at hand, but there are more and more things coming out there. They're all playing that kind of
00:40:48
Speaker
tricky challenge of if it's like an online survey of how do I make this as easy for you, the non-carbon person, to complete the information but give you an accurate score at the same time, which is a constant headache but something hopefully as an industry we're getting better at.
Getting Detailed with Carbon Footprints
00:41:07
Speaker
The lessons are typically quite common and in terms of use less energy, go to solar if you can, use renewables or this kind of thing. So From a personal point of view, if it's talking about your home footprint outside of work, I'd recommend you don't hire someone like me. There's free tools online that can give you a bit of guidance in 10 minutes, and you'll probably know most of the things you need to do already. It just might help give you a bit of an oomph to really make that change. and But for businesses, probably encourage them all to get a bit geekier than that and say, well, actually, what is the carbon footprint of my business and what it is that I actually make?
00:41:47
Speaker
And in terms of the the future of the carbon measuring industry or or any other thoughts that you have about the industry that we haven't touched upon, are there any aspects of the industry maybe on the horizon or or now that you think is particularly interesting?
The Growing Carbon Measuring Industry
00:42:02
Speaker
um So there's more regulations coming that's probably the most boring answer I could say but it's going to start impacting everyone's job more and more and more. um It's a growing industry so if you're interested and passionate about it I'll encourage you to get involved in this world because we need more and more brains and passion and excitement coming into it as possible. The offsetting world is perhaps ah a conversation for a whole other day but that is super interesting and even more fast-paced than the accountancy kind of under-quenching side because it's a bit of a... or was or is maybe still a bit of a cowboy industry but there's some amazing things going on there and the exact opposite also going on in that world. yeah There's loads you could go on and say. The other thing I'd probably love to kind of encourage listeners to think about is if they are passionate about
00:42:55
Speaker
having an impact and reducing emissions, it's very likely they can have a much bigger impact at work, at whatever job that they do.
00:43:07
Speaker
Everyone's job involves creating emissions in some way. um And actually by making a change at work, um you'll probably have a much greater impact overall, even if it's kind of just engaging with your supply chain, engaging with your colleagues, creating a new staff commuting policy or whatever it may be that you do, you would likely have a far greater impact than you would do just by making a change in your personal life, which i I'd obviously encourage you to do as well.
00:43:36
Speaker
But in terms of that kind of time and effort-based argument at the beginning, people really miss a trick. If you want to have an impact on the world, challenge your company or your customers at your company or your suppliers at your company to start being better in the next year. And the numbers in terms of tons of CO2 that you can start to influence and bring down are really, really cool.
00:44:01
Speaker
and And are there any great books or or resources about it? There was a good one. There was a stage about like three years ago that I'll have a sales call with someone and all the ones that preceded all read the same book. um So I love that one. And it is actually really geeky, but Whenever you if you stick with it for three pages, everyone becomes weirdly fascinated by it. It's called How Bad Are Bananas? It's kind of like the carbon Bible, but it's really, really good. It's kind of written by the kind of he's got Mike Burns Lee is the kind of like godfather in our world of like the top dog.
00:44:40
Speaker
But I'd really recommend that. It's a bit of a book that you might have on like a coffee table or in the loo. You kind of pick it up, drop it down all the time, but get it for your office and put it wherever people have their coffee rake or something like that.
00:44:53
Speaker
it's You get it within two or three minutes of reading it or what it's trying to do. It's basically the carbon footprint of everything. What is the carbon footprint of Elon Musk flying to the moon? What is the carbon footprint of a volcano erupting? What is the carbon footprint of sending an email? What is the carbon footprint of a podcast? Whatever it may be. And just getting people thinking about when everything does, how can we redesign each one of those things to be better? I'd really recommend that one.
Contact Information for Charlie Cotton
00:45:22
Speaker
And how can um listeners get in touch with you or eCollective, how can they find ah can they find you? ah So our website is ecollectivecarbon.com or if you're looking for me, I'm Charlie Cotton, that's charlie at ecollectivecarbon.com.
00:45:41
Speaker
Okay, perfect. And I just want to say thanks for jumping on this podcast with me. It's been a pleasure to chat with you and hear your insights and thoughts too, and being generous with your time. Likewise. Yeah, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thanks again to Charlie Cotton for talking about his career and the world of carbon footprint measuring with us. And thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode.